FRACTURED LIFE AND THE AMBIGUITY OF HISTORICAL TIME: BIOPOLITICS IN AGAMBEN AND ARENDT

Examining Agamben's reception of Hannah Arendt, and especiallyThe Human Condition, in his theorization of biopolitics, this essay argues thatHomo Sacer I, by identifying Arendt with a quasi-Straussian “political philosophy,” fails to acknowledge the complexity of her conception of history. Far from simply affirming the normative force of classical political categories, Arendt regards these as emerging from a living power of distinction that thinking, by showing the historical process that brings about the effacement of these distinctions, seeks to bring into view. Nevertheless, Arendt's conception of history is not without contradiction: while arguing that metaphysics went astray by subordinating praxis to poiesis, her very account of history suggests that this subordination is inevitable, since only a “poetic,” indeed violent, act of making a distinction can distinguish praxis from poiesis. Precisely this problem lies at the center of Agamben's early engagement with Arendt inThe Man without Content.